1881
April 1st is a day of many meanings. First of all, it is the Assyrian New Year. It is also the feast day of the interesting Desert Mother, Mary of Egypt. And I want to remember that it is also Edible Book Day.
And of course, today is April Fool’s Day, the only day of the year that most people fact-check.
A quick look at previous posts from this day revealed a few, but the consistent thread seems to be the anecdotes Thomas Merton gleaned from his desert mother and father.
“Once there was a disciple of a Greek philosopher. He had been commanded by his master to give money to everyone who insulted him for three years. When this period of trial was over, his master said to him: “Now go to Athens and learn wisdom.” As the disciple was entering Athens, he met a certain wise man who was sitting at the gate and insulting everyone who went in and out. He also insulted the disciple, and the disciple immediately began to laugh. “Why do you laugh when I insult you?” the wise man said. The disciple replied: “Because for three years I have been paying for these things, and now you have given them to me for free. Enter the city, said the wise man, and it is all yours.” The abbot John often related the above story and said: “This is the door of God, the gate by which our fathers entered the heavenly city with much rejoicing in their sufferings.”(Thomas Merton, Desert Wisdom: The Words of the Desert Fathers, New York: New Directions, 1960: 39)
You can see why I support this.
It reminds me of a poem by Daigurei Kan.
Today’s begging is over, we’re at a crossroads
Take a walk near Hachiman Shrine
I’m talking to the kids.
Last year I was a foolish monk.
There’s no change this year.
There is a passage in the fourth chapter of my favorite koan collection, “Mumonquan,” that goes, “Master Huo An asked, ‘Why do the Western Yi have no beards?’
Mumon Huikai, the compiler of Mumon Zen, wrote commentaries on the poems and prose.
Don’t discuss dreams
In front of fools
Beardless barbarians!
It just obscures the obvious
Robert Aitken, America’s great master of intimacy, offers his own commentary on the incident, quoting the poet Wallace Stevens:
His question was,
His best statement: It’s his own sequence.
his own pageants and processions and exhibitions.
Another contemporary commentator, the Zen teacher Guo Gao, reminds us that “practice is for fools, but it is very important.” Both Mumon’s poem and Guo Gao’s comments call to mind a phrase first coined by the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Corinthians when he spoke of “the fools of Christ.” And then the desert fathers and mothers who followed were called holy fools. And of course there is Francis of Assisi, sometimes called God’s fool and sometimes the only Christian.
The consequences of foolish wisdom appear in the world’s faiths: the God-mad saint Majzub in Sufism, and of course Kanzan and later Ikkyu are obvious examples in the Zen tradition.
Intimacy is an invitation to a certain stupidity. A wise or clever man sees no benefit in intimacy. And it is true. After all, what is a beard, not a beard?
But in Zen and other intimate ways, we are invited into something startling. First, that beard. Second, the absence of that beard. And then, in this little case, everything is on display. The pointing. The disruption of our ideas of what is and what is not. An invitation.
Touch your face.
Is there a beard there?
If so, what does that mean?
If no, what does that mean?
What a stupid project.
Dreams pile upon dreams until we are faced with a simple truth: The words are there, there is all the world. All we have to do is let go. Open your hands.
Pageants and processions and exhibitions.
This is God’s door through which our joyful mothers and fathers, who have overcome many hardships, can enter heaven.
Obviously a stupid project…
